Proceedings from the 2019 CEA Conference - The Joy Project - Helping Faculty to Find Joy in and out of the Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

Proceedings from the 2019 CEA Conference in New Orleans examine how to improve student retention by strengthening faculty advising through work-life balance and joy. The talk argues that students often remain away due to life challenges, yet faculty face similar stressors without comparable support. It introduces a college-wide initiative, The Joy Project, describing resources, local partnerships on workplace joy and stress, faculty reactions, and future plans, grounded in a survey-based leadership approach.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

Background: Student Retention and Faculty Support

Student drop-out drivers and faculty advising needs

Work-life balance literature and productivity-focused models

The Joy Project Overview

Leadership model and bottom-up approach

Institutional context at Arkansas Tech University

Faculty Survey and Research Basis

Fall 2018 survey design and response rate

Survey domains: work-life integration, stress sources, and stress management

Proceedings from the 2019 CEA Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana: The Joy Project: Helping Faculty to Find Joy in and out of the Classroom Erin Clair Arkansas Tech University One of the main challenges facing colleges and universities today is student retention. To help in this effort, many institutions have looked to improve their training of faculty advisors. For decades, research shows that, the vast majority of time, students do not drop out of college because they cannot do the level of work expected of them, but rather because of “life challenges”: financial struggles, the inability to cope with stress, mental or physical health issues, family pressures, or confusion about why they are in college. 1 To help many students stay in college today, faculty need to advise students in these areas as much as they need to advise them about what classes to take. But what we found in surveying the faculty in my college and in the surveys of faculty at other institutions is that faculty members themselves tend to struggle in the same areas as their students except they don’t have the same level of support as students.2 The question then became,“How can we help our faculty members build an effective work-life balance, as that will also better train our faculty as advisors?” In search of that answer, we thereby asked,“How do we help faculty to experience joy (i.e., epiphany, transcendent revelation, breakthrough discovery, and synergy) within their lives and within their classrooms, especially at an underfunded state institution where the rewards for faculty are unlikely to be financial?” This talk will explain the steps I have undertaken in my work for the dean’s office atthe College of Arts & Humanities at Arkansas Tech University to address the above questions via a College-wide endeavor called “The Joy Project.” I’ll share the resources we have made available to faculty to help them understand joy both inside and outside the classroom; I’ll discuss the partnerships we are creating with local institutions to understand joy and stress in the workplace; I’ll share the reactions from faculty to this project (both positive and less positive); and I’ll outline our future plans for The Joy Project. My hope is that this talk can be of use to faculty at other institutions who are facing similar challenges helping their students, themselves, and their colleagues find a work-life balance that is not just livable, but frequently joyful. When we look at the available literature on faculty work-life balance—that is, the literature about how to be a good administrator—it is mostly about productivity; namely, how administrators can increase faculty productivity. Even the “Great Colleges to Work For” survey published by The Chronicle of Higher Education measures happiness in terms of workload and compensation (“Great Colleges”). Don’t get me wrong, workload and compensation are critical factors in stress-levels in and out ofthe office; but let’s think about how students are supported versus how faculty are supported. Mental health, physical health, stress workshops: at many institutions, if not most of them, there is little to no support for faculty in these areas, but yet, we expect faculty to advise students to be healthy in these areas. There are effective leadership models we can employ that value human relationships and a healthy work-life balance. These are more productive than models that only value faculty output. As well, techniques from these models can be used by individuals and small workplace communities even under an unsupportive administration to help faculty gain more control over their own access to joy. What we’ve established in the College is a research-based example of a leadership model that attempts to find active ways to value faculty based on what they say they need to be successful: from the bottom-up, rather than the top down. Arkansas Tech University, which is the third largest institution in the stat

FAQs

Why does the presentation connect faculty support to student retention?

It explains that students often struggle with life challenges such as stress, health issues, family pressure, or finances, and faculty advisors need to support these areas to improve retention.

What is The Joy Project?

The Joy Project is a college-wide endeavor led from the dean’s office that provides resources to help faculty experience joy and manage stress both in and out of the classroom.

How was the project informed by faculty input?

In Fall 2018, the college surveyed all 107 full-time faculty with a 62% response rate, using an anonymous voluntary Survey Pro questionnaire across multiple work-life and stress-related areas.

Oct 15, 2026

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